The archive (16MB) expands out to ~3GB, and each of the ~500 files in the repository is listed within the metadata archive 65,535 times.

When processed by a repository manager like Red Hat Satellite this causes the underlying Pulp & Python processes to go nuts, consume 100% of server memory and swap space before dying due to an Out of Memory error.

Other repositories on packages.microsoft.com (like Visual Studio Code) are not currently affected by this issue.